


Incomplete Effacement Palus Nebularum

by tinyflor



Category: Heaven Will Be Mine (Visual Novel)
Genre: Scraps, okay sounds good, original ship-self description, please dont make fun of me, so can i just make anything a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 12:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21458209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyflor/pseuds/tinyflor
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Incomplete Effacement Palus Nebularum

The Earth does not have a “second moon.” If it did, we would have known about it a long time ago. Near-Earth Object 3753 barely even qualifies as an asteroid, let alone a moon. It is a nameless, inert rock whose orbit around the Sun happens to cross Earth’s own. There is no orbital, spatial, or cultural relationship between the two bodies. It has never known Earth, and Earth never knew it either.

But if it did, we might have called it Cruithne.

Officially, the Incomplete Effacement Palus Nebularum does not exist. It also literally doesn’t exist. It was never designed, never built, never flown. The only time the name is even mentioned in existing records was a concept pitched by a Celestial Mechanics technician, based around a mechanism designed for silent running in space. It’s a stupid idea, because the whole point of a ship-self is to enable communication, not prevent it. And space is already quiet anyway! You can’t even make sound on purpose! You literally couldn’t come up with a more useless design if you tried.

Apparently, by replicating a pilot’s tidal forces and directing them inward, it is theoretically possible to contain the effects entirely within the hull of the ship, emitting little to no detectable disturbances while still enabling the ship to function. If the barrier were made impermeable on both sides, it could also cut itself off from external tidal forces, rendering it effectively untouchable by all forms of conceptual weaponry. Neither of these things work, not even in theory. 

First, complete isolation isn’t even possible, and it would leave the pilot incapable of receiving any kind of external input, not just harm. Second, the dampening system would require the ship to predict the pilot’s intents before they even think of them; a strange inversion of the usual linking process. Anything not predicted would be detectable normally.

The concept did eventually get used – not for the ridiculous purpose it was intended for, but as a research project. The concept of internal monitoring and prediction in the dampening system was an interesting angle to increase link percentages for the actually functional ships. A prototype was made and tinkered with to observe the effect; the resulting research would later be credited with increasing the responsiveness of third-generation ships by roughly 0.003%. The actual machine built for the research was discarded, somehow eventually ending up in the possession of Cradle’s Graces, the only people capable of believing in such pointlessly impossible things.

The thing that could be called the Palus Nebularum and the thing that could be called Cruithne were a perfect fit for one another, a girl desperate to not exist and a machine nearly capable of fulfilling that wish. Something that doesn’t exist can’t really fight, though. It can’t be seen, and it can’t be heard. Only felt, barely, on the edge of your perception. It’s a fight that you have to buy into, even more so than normal. And it’s so, so hard to exist, even just a little bit. Getting anything through the barrier takes direct, concerted effort, and while the Palus Nebularum may be insulated from outside forces, it’s exceptionally sensitive to those that make it in. 

Piloting the Palus Nebularum is as close as you can get to functionally being a ghost.


End file.
